I initially had big plans to “make a splash” with my first actual Substack post. I wanted to write a five thousand word thing that would get me “mad followers,” but then I realized that was a horrible idea and I’d end up half-planning some piece that I never followed through on. Then my Twitter got hacked so I wrote this about that.
I’m really good at being lazy. Not debilitatingly so, but definitely enough that if I don’t have to do something, you can probably bet that I’m not gonna do it. There are a bunch of reasons why this is the case — a lifelong habit of procrastination, ADHD, I’d rather be driving a Titleist, etc. — but the practical one is that I have a few time-sucking apps on my phone that I cycle through because they’re there and my phone is there too, and then boom: Half the day’s gone and I haven’t even done the Wordle. If I were writing this for money, I’d probably google some statistic about people screwing around on their phones or link to a thing that someone published about technology and modern life (likely a piece by Kevin, or an episode of Emilie and Andrea’s podcast), but I’m writing this for free, so just click here to go to Kevin’s Substack and click here to go to Emilie and Andrea’s podcast and see if you can find something helpful.
Twitter was definitely one of those apps, along with, like, Instagram, a bunch of golf websites, my notes app, maybe some random game. But then last week, I wanted to see what the people I followthought about Yellowstone (we’ve just started watching it, and it’s sick on both a “Succession + cowboys” level as well as a slightly more morbid “this is conservative prestige TV what the fuck” level), and I couldn’t log in. My Twitter password was no longer my Twitter password, my email was no longer associated with my Twitter account, my phone number was no longer plugged into Twitter for the two-factor authentication thingamajig, and also my profile picture was no longer this picture of me that someone had drawn of me at a party in like 2013 but instead the globe-shaped logo of a crypto thing. Also whoever hacked me had changed my display name to “Proof,” which was the name of the crypto thing.
Sadly, my hacker was not turning my profile into a stan account for the deceased D12 member (which would have been objectively tight). Instead, Proof was the name of said crypto thing. And they had seemingly hacked me to get my verification check. After friends started sending me screenshots of what my hacker was posting, I realized that they were using this fake Proof account to reply to the real Proof account’s tweets with legit-ish looking posts that, thanks to my lil’ blue check, appeared upon first glance to be coming from the real Proof account. These posts contained links that, if clicked, would presumably drain all the Ethereum out of your crypto wallet, or steal your bank information, or send a plague of locusts to your house which would arrange themselves in an ever-expanding QR code which, some day, would be visible from space.
All in all, it wasn’t that bad. The guy got away with it for a day maybe, after which the spammy posts were deleted from my feed and my new Twitter picture was erased in favor of nothing, all of which suggests that Twitter locked my account down and the hacker/spammer bro can’t get back in. On the other hand, I, too, cannot get into my Twitter. I did all the things you’re supposed to do to get your Twitter back, but — and not to make this too much about Elon — it doesn’t seem at this point like there are a whole lot of folks who work at Twitter who aren’t code-style people anymore. Like, maybe the code-style people locked the account down, and the non-code-style people are the ones who are supposed to give it back to me. Or maybe the locking-down-the-account thing was automated, and there’s no one left to push the Give-Drew-His-Twitter-Back button. Or maybe the new guy running @drewmillard just went too hard and is in Twitter Jail but he’ll get the account back in a few days. There is so much in this world that we do not know!
One thing I’ve gotta give my hacker credit for, though, is that he knows how to do numbers. His first act while wearing his new @drewmillard suit was to re-post, word-for-word, a Tweet I’d written a few days prior about how I’d spent a decade believing that there was a Tom Hanks movie called The Pony Express. When I posted it, I got a normal level of engagement on it. When that dude posted it, it got nearly a thousand RTs plus an avalanche of people in my mentions being like “haha” and “wow” and “nice” and “i hope you’ll feel better soon” and “this is a very interesting and amazing project!” When I clicked on the profiles of my new internet friends, it seemed like they were also posting scammy free-money stuff? It was all very confusing and made me feel a bit more in tune with the layer of the internet that’s just bots talking to each other.
I’m really sure I have a suuuuuuper clear point here other than that if you want to go mega vi, leave it to the professionals, especially if those professionals are good enough at the internet to change your Twitter password for you. I also realize that writing this increases my odds that someone at Twitter will be like, “Oh shit we should probably give this dude his account back,” but I’m probably increasing the odds of this happening by like .01 percent because I am not a famous person and it’s either gonna happen on whatever the normal timeline is or it will never happen and one by one we will all end up leaving Twitter via this same process.
Okay, that’s it for today. Stay tuned: I’ve got a really kickass piece about Kid Rock planned, and now that I’ve written this I have one less thing to write that isn’t the kickass Kid Rock piece.
Dude just admit that you deleted your twitter after I did it bc you were jelly
Hi, Drew I'm glad you posted this, and that I actually found this article. I was one of the people who got hacked through your hacked twitter account. I had my eth and 3 NFTs stolen. It wasn't much but it was enough to me and very stressful. I posted some hate/comments about you on twitter and of course reported your account as that was all I had to go on. I'm sorry and I will post some retractions and hopefully be able to link this article as well. I hope that you are able to get your twitter account back as it sucks to be hacked.❤